The market has become an increasingly popular venue with up to 20 stalls filling the square every fourth Saturday of the month with a variety of mainly home-grown or locally-produced items.

Through the winter there's an inevitable falling-off of numbers, but some traders are always there whatever the weather throws at them.

It's quite a procedure to set everything up from around 7am and, thanks to the guiding hand of Ann Chappel, this has worked successfully from the outset.

Profits from the market have mainly been targeted towards Fakenham in Bloom and the Christmas lights. The partnership has agreed that these will remain priorities, but will also be looking to support other projects of benefit to the immediate community.

Maybe we take these initiatives too much for granted. I think they should be cherished. If you listen to what browsing shoppers have to say, many of them from outside the town, markets such as this are a sheer delight.

In the age of the superstore where your celery has been imported from Spain and your cherry tomatoes come from, of all places, Belgium, to buy home-grown is special. Not just for the taste, although that is a major reason, but also because the stallholders are experts in their own fields and can fill you in on the whys and wherefores of their goods.

Now that the growing season is full steam ahead, mark the dates in your diaries from May onwards to experience this exceptional happening every month.

• Readers are not what they used to be, if that makes sense. I see much less evidence of reading when out and about these days than I'm sure was apparent years ago – on public transport, in waiting rooms, even the inevitable queues.

My confessional here is that if I know I'm likely to be quietly static for any length of time – even waiting to give blood – I'll always have a book handy to lose myself in. That said, it was sheer delight to be an onlooker at the first Norfolk Shorts Book Award in our library recently.

Three writers there were confronted by a host of their fans from half-a-dozen local primary schools. These youngsters couldn't get enough of reading and had devoted time and imagination to writing critiques of selected books as well as original designs for their covers.

The authors had them in the palms of their hands as they spoke about how they had become writers after doing all sorts of other things, and now spent their working days carving out stories for younger readers.

Following the brief awards ceremony, the stampede to buy books from among the hundreds laid out on tabletops was a sight to see.

I suppose it was always the case, but nurturing a love of reading in those early school years surely has to be one of the most precious gifts to pass on to the next generation, particularly nowadays when instant access to alternative attractions is such an easy – and, dare I say it – a lazier option.